German Ridesharing Platform Carpooling.com Celebrates 5 Million Members

The German ridesharing platform Carpooling.com has passed 5 million registered users. This makes it one of the world’s largest collaborative consumption communities alongside Couchsurfing (6 million members) and Airbnb (4million guests, 300,000 listings). To meet this growth in countries outside of its mother country Germany, Carpooling.com is now opening offices in France, Poland, Italy and Spain. 1.3 Million people share rides each month, the equivalent of 3,000 high speed trains.

Interestingly, 23% of their users are now 40 years or older, and more women than men use the site (53% women versus 47% men). After its rebranding from Mitfahrgelegenheit.de to Carpooling.com, the platform now connects drivers and passengers in 7 languages across 40 countries. The most active users after Germany come from France, Poland, the UK, Austria, Spain and Italy.

As CEO Markus Barnikel reports, “we have seen a 30% growth of our user base in the last 12 months. We are proud to have broken down any previous apprehensions and gained users’ trust with our user profiles and rating system.”